IT Unlike Any Other

Stop beep in Windows XP volume control

I’ve been a fan of O’Reilly’s Windows Annoyances books since Win95, and the annoyances.org website is chock-full of excellent tips for tuning the annoyances out of Windows. (Short of wiping and loading UNIX, of course.)

In this particular instance, I got sick of how Windows Volume Control beeps so very loudly in my earbuds when the Master Volume slider is adjusted. Happily, it is easy to completely disable that feature! Note: I skipped right from Step 5 to Step 10, and now I can adjust the volume on my Dell Mini without going deaf.

By following the following steps, you can turn off the beep without having to reboot. The steps are:

1. Right-click on My Computer
2. On the Hardware tab, click on [Device Manager]
3. On the “View” menu, select “Show hidden devices”
4. Under “Non-Plug and Play Drivers”, right-click “Beep”
5. Click “Disable”
6. Answer [Yes] when asked if you really want to disable it 7. Answer [No] when asked if you want to reboot
8. Right-click “Beep” again.
9. Click “Properties”
10. On the “Driver” tab, set the Startup type to Disabled
11. Click [Stop] 12. Click [OK]
13. Answer [No] when asked if you want to reboot